Kerry Cohen is the author of two autobiographical books, Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity and Easy, but not being big readers on subjects we feel are more ideally suited to learning by "doing", we hadn't heard of her before a May Marie Claire interview, "Confessions of a Sex Addict." What, wonders the magazine, possessed Kerry to subject herself to such a "harrowing litany" of casual sex encounters? "The same reason heroin addicts go back for a high," offers the knowing Kerry. Um, to ward off a prolonged period of uncontrollable throwing up and crapping yourself punctuated by severe cold flashes potentially resultable in death? Not really. "It was default behavior, and to not resist it would have taken a lot more effort," she goes on, although I have a sense she actually said the opposite. "You don't even have to be that attractive to get male attention...I also thought I was different from [most sluts] because I was trying to have a relationship...I felt unloved.'" So, wait a sec. Is this really sex addiction? Or more like the "human condition"? How many dudes did Kerry even fuck? Ooooh, it's in the first line!

KERRY COHEN can barely remember all of the 40-odd men she's slept with...

Well, Jesus Christ. Fortysomething. Memory repress a few off that list and you've got something approaching 37, which would be your age, Kerry, and that would be "too old to have learned the meaning of the word 'promiscuous' from Timbaland feat. Nelly Furtado." You know, I have this theory about people who think some grave injustice has occurred when they find out some dude with whom they had a one night stand doesn't actually care about them, and it's sort of the same theory I have about people who generate two separate memoirs without actually doing anything particularly memorable. But I try to give sluts the benefit of the doubt, which is why I consulted the "About Kerry" section of Kerry's two separate personal websites and...

Kerry loves learning. She loves books and lively, passionate discussions. She loves delving deep inside a subject and pulling up the hidden pieces. She loves to see the connections between things. For these reasons, college was a fantastic time for Kerry. And, the social life wasn't too shabby either...As time went on, Kerry's writing matured, melded, and took on new meaning, as all work does when you keep at it. Kerry started to write Easy when Ezra was 11 months old and somehow managed to keep writing between nursies, trips to the park, colds, cuddles, and being dragged by the hand around the house. This is the thing about being a writer: it doesn't matter what else comes. Like breathing, you do it. You don't know how else to live.

My first book - all writers have such a first book, don't they? - was titled "Poop and Pee." Each page showed private body parts urinating and defecating. Inexplicably, one page showed a penis defecating. The images were wordless, until the final page where I wrote, simply, "sniff-sniff." Sort of brilliant, I think.